1 Rationale Nowadays, English is an international language and has been widely used in many countries in the world In Vietnam, English is also considered the most important foreign language and taught as a compulsory subject in most schools throughout the country It has also become an important need of the Vietnamese as a means of communication As a result, there have been a lot of changes in English teaching in order to meet the need One of the changes relates to new English language teaching syllabus and new textbooks, which have arrived at high schools since 2006 The new textbooks change from a grammar and vocabulary focus into a skill focus: listening, writing, speaking and reading This, therefore, has advantages as well as disadvantanges in teaching and learning English In the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” ,which refers to "English 10", reading is the first skill presented in each unit This proves the important role of reading This is understandable as generally speaking, reading provides students with the abilities to understand the written materials Reading has become not only an important means to gain knowledge but also a means by which further study takes place This is the second year I have taught the new textbook “Tieng Anh 10” to the 10th form students I have met a lot of difficulties The biggest challenges emerge from teaching reading comprehension My colleagues in my school have the same problems We usually find it difficult and hard to teach in reading lessons Despite the teachers’ efforts, the students’ reading skills are disappointing Most of the students not understand the texts and not complete the reading tasks well If those difficulties are not found out and no solutions to overcome are given, it is certain that reading lessons cannot be successful and it even becomes worse This has a great effect on students’ learning result On the other hands, students will be fed up with learning English if they find it worthless to study this subject For all these reasons, it is necessary to find out difficulties in teaching reading comprehension to the 10th form students at my school and the solutions The author has been encouraged to carry out the study on “difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) to the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School” Once the difficulties are identified, some solutions to overcome them will be suggested Aims of the study The specific aims of the study are: - to investigate the areas of difficulty that the teachers at Ke Sat High School are coping with in their daily teaching reading comprehension to the 10th form students with the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” - to suggest some solutions to overcome these difficulties The study is carried out with a hope that the findings from the study will be of some benefits to the teachers at Ke Sat High School Scope of the study This study is limited to: - the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School - the teachers of English at Ke Sat High School - reading comprehension in the new English textbook “Tieng Anh10” Methods of the study With the aim of finding out the difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the new English textbook "Tieng Anh 10" to 10 - form students at Ke Sat High School, this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods To achieve the above aims, the study has been carried out with the data collected from different instruments: - interview questions for teachers of English at Ke Sat High School to investigate their perceptions of reading difficulties - questionnaire for the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School to collect information about their views of reading difficulties and causes of them Beside these instruments, classroom observation is used to record information from teachers Design of the study The study is divided into three parts: - The first part is the Introduction, which presents the retionale for the study, the aims, methods, scope of the study as well as the design of the thesis - The second part is the Development of the study, divided into five chapters: + Chapter is for Literature review, which provides the theoretical background + Chapter gives an overview of the new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” and current situation of teaching the textbook at Ke Sat High School + Chapter deals with the study: context of the study, research questions, the participants, the data collection methods and data analysis + Chapter is for findings and discussion of findings + Chapter suggests some solutions to overcome difficulties - The last part is the Conclusion of the study, which summarises the study, states the limitations of the study and recommendation for further research 1.1 The nature of reading 1.1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension Definition of reading Goodman (1971: 135) considers reading as “a psycholinguistic process by which the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”, and the act of reconstruction is viewed as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming” According to Rumelhart (1977) “reading involves the reader, the text, and the interaction between reader and text” It means the roles of learners and reading text are placed an important position in reading act Harmer (1989: 153) views reading from a different perspective In his definition, “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain The eyes receive the message and the brain has to work out the significance of the message” Smith (1985: 102) shares the same view on reading when he defines “reading is understanding the author’s thought” It means that the readers “read the author’s mind not the author’s words” Attempts to define reading have been numerous However, the act of reading is not completely understood nor easily described The definitions have been drawn from different reading theories and models by various scholars However, they all try to find out the nature of reading and reading act, in which the readers, reading process and reading message are emphasized Reading comprehension Reading comprehension plays an important role in teaching and learning reading a foreign language It can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required in the reading text as efficiently as possible According to Swam (1975: 1) “a student is good at comprehension” if “he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text” Acording to Grellet (1981: 3) “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” Though these opinions are different, they all have a common point, that is, reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms 1.1.2 Effective reading comprehension Cook (1989: 14) shows that effective reading comprehension would be best reflected if we bring distinct cognitive behaviors of good versus poor readers before, during and after reading an assignment into a comparison Stage Good or mature readers Poor or immature readers - Active prior knowledge - Start reading without preparation Before - Understand task and set purpose - Read without knowing why reading - Choose appropriate strategies - Read without considering how to approach the material - Focus attention - Are easily distracted - Anticipate predict - Read to get done - Use fix-up strategies when lack of - understanding occurs During reading - + of comprehension occurs Use contextual analysis to assist - comprehension occurring Do not recognize important vocabulary Self-monitor comprehension by : knowing Do not know what to when lack comprehension is - Do not see any organization Add on rather than integrate new + knowing what is information understood - Do not realize they not understand After reading - Reflect on what was read - Stop reading - Feel success is a result of effort - Feel success is s result of luck - Summarise major ideas - Seek additional information from outside sources On the other hands, Ur (1996: 148) considers effective reading comprehension as a process combining such elements as: - a clear purpose in mind - an enhanced motivation - appropriate reading comprehension strategies based on the purposes and motivation - good prediction - sufficient background information and vocabulary - close attention to the significant bits - fairly high speed 1.2 Stages of teaching reading It is common knowledge that a reading lesson consists of three important stages: Pre reading (Before you read), While - reading (While you read) and Post - reading (After you read) Obviously, each stage has its own chatacteristics and time allocation 1.2.1 Pre - reading (Before you read) This stage is carried out before the students begin reading the text It plays an essential part in the whole process of a reading lesson, because it is difficult to ask students to read the text without the preperation that involves such activities as pre - reading questions, pre - teaching vocabulary According to William (1984: 37), the purposes of the pre - reading stage are: - to introduce and arouse interest in the topic - to motivate learners by giving a reason for reading - to provide some language preparation for the text Normally, pre - reading stage often makes up about one-tenth of the time allocation for the whole lesson However, depending on each lesson, it may last shorter or longer Before delivering activities for this stage, the teacher needs to pay careful attention to the objectives of the lesson, the situation of teaching and learning, the students’ needs into account 1.2.2 While - reading (While you read) William (1984: 38) states that while - reading stage is the main part of a reading lesson with the following specific aims: - to help understanding of the writer’s purpose - to help understanding of the text structure - to clarify text content The teacher, at the while - reading stage, needs to help their students comprehend the text thoroughly while the students have to apply to the best their reading skills like skimming, scanning, guessing, etc to understand the text as well as the writer’s purpose conveyed through the reading text Apparently, time allocation for this is nearly two-thirds of the whole lesson 1.2.3 Post - reading (After you read) It is the last step of a reading lesson It is the time for students’ reproduction What they reproduce will reflect how well they comprehend the text In William’s view (1984: 39), the post - reading stage is aimed at consolidating or reflecting upon what has been read and relating the text to the learners’ own knowledge, interests or views Normally, it takes ten or fifteen minutes to complete all activities at this stage To conclude, the above-mentioned stages are essential for a reading lesson However, it is not necessary to carry out all these stages mechanically on every occasion Depending on the purposes of a reading lesson, the teacher may apply these stages as well as allocate time for each stage appropriately 1.3 Difficulties in teaching reading In reading, it is not easy for a student to be successful in learning reading, because there are many factors affect the success such as students’ habits, attitude, motivation, exposure to the target language , textual characteristics, the way reading is taught, and the teacher’s classroom techniques or learning environment, etc Yorio (1971), Jolly (1978), Coady (1979) and others have grouped those factors into three types: Reading skill problems, Language problems, and Cultural background knowledge 1.3.1 Reading skill problems According to Jolly (1978), Coady (1979) and others, one’s first language reading ability plays a more important role in reading success than his level of the target language does, because foreign language reading requires the transference of old skills, not the learning of new ones They believe that if the reader has a poor reading ability in his mother tounge, then, he cannot read well in a foreign language Students’ limited reading skills cteate many problems, such as reading slowly, failing to understand and summarise main ideas of the reading text, unabling to guess or predict meaning of the words or phrases used in that context, etc Therefore, such students find it hard to be successful in their reading They cannot understand the text thoroughly and those are the reasons why they not want to keep on reading In addition, learner’s motivation towards reading is also an important factor in reading process It may effect on reading result such as good speed, enjoyment and comprehension Lack of motivation, the reader does not want to read any more 1.3.2 Language problems According to Yorio (1971: 108), reading problems of foreign language learners are due largely to imperfect knowledge of the target language and to mother tongue interference in the reading process In his view, reading involves four factors: knowledge of the language, ability to predict or guess in order to make the correct choice, ability to remember the previous cues, and ability to make the necessary associations between the different cues that have been selected Therefore, learners with limited knowledge of the target language might have considerable difficulty when reading in the target language Clarke (1980) and Alderson (1984) share this view They acknowledge that a lack of appropriate linguistic knowledge constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2 Dealing with the text, readers have to work with unfamiliar and difficult topics These are called “text problems” The context of the text might be rather strange to the students, that makes them unable to understand Besides, another kind of problem is “vocabulary problems” Readers encounter a lot of difficulties in dealing with proverbs and idioms, synonyms and antonyms, polysemantic and subtechnical vocabulary 1.3.3 Cultural background knowledge Apart from language problems and reading skill problems, cultural background knowledge also affects students’ reading ability as culture plays a central role for many topics And that comprehension of a culturally unfamiliar text is more difficult than comprehension of a culturally familiar text, because readers, facing up with unfamiliar cultural context, may mistranslate or misinterpret the text according to their own cultural experience For the text structure, the impact of culture is less outwardly evident but apperently still present They will greatly affect the reader’s comprehension Sometimes, the implicit cultural knowledge presupposed by a text or from different assumption about meaning and comprehension held by the writer also causes difficulty to the reader From what has been discussed, it can be concluded that there are three main factors that affect reading comprehension: reading skills, language knowledge, and cultural background knowledge Reading difficulties may be caused by a number of other factors Whatever kind of problems are, they are various in the reading process in a foreign language and great efforts must be made to overcome them Summary This chapter provides a theoretical framework for the study First, it provides an overview of the nature of reading, in which the definitions of reading and reading comprehension are discussed Then, effective reading comprehension is addressed What is more, this chapter also discusses stages of teaching reading Finally, it provides an insight into reading difficulties Having looked at the literature review of reading, the textbook related to this thesis will be presented hereby ! 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( ) * ) 2.1 An overview of the new textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) 2.1.1 Objectives The new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” (the set of standard textbooks) was written by a group of lecturers of College of Foreign Languages (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) and published in 2006 The syllabus of the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is the continuation of that of the textbooks at secondary schools Therefore, the objectives for the 10th form students to achieve would be higher According to the Ministry of Education and Training, by the end of the 10th form students should be able to: - Listen for the main ideas or for specific information of a monologue or a dialogue with the length of 120 - 150 words of the topics they have learnt - Exchange information in English at a simple level about the situations relating to the topics they have learnt - Comprehend passages of appropriately 190 - 230 words about the topics they have learnt Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail Develop vocabulary comprehension: gap - filling, matching, ect - Write paragraphs (of about 100 - 120 words) relating to the topics they have learnt according to a model or with prompts 2.1.2 Content of the textbook The new English textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is designed under theme- based approach with 16 units Each unit is about a theme The units are set up in the following order: - Unit 1: A day in the life of - Unit 9: Undersea world - Unit 2: School talks - Unit 10: Conservation - Unit 3: People’s background - Unit 11: National parks - Unit 4: Special education - Unit 12: Music - Unit 5: Technology and you - Unit 13: Films and cinema Some common reading skills which are offten used in reading lessons in the textbook"Tieng Anh 10" include: Skimming, scanning, and predicting Different texts need different skills, so it is helpful to point out for the students one or two pertinent skills for each text type and to help them practise those skills directly a Skimming: This skill helps readers to get general, overall ideas of the whole text Therefore, the readers must know where to find the main ideas of different paragraph and be able to synthesize them into an organic whole The best way to teach skimming is to ask students to read the first and the last paragraph in full, the first and the last sentence of each paragraph in between and pick up the main ideas In the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”, although the tasks which relate to skimming are not many, this skill is often used to find the main ideas of each paragraph That helps the students answering questions task more quickly and easily I myself often use this skill in my reading lessons I find it useful My students are shown how to skim the paragraphs and the whole passage They are acquainted with this skill in the first reading lessons of the textbook E.g Task in Unit 13 "Films and Cinema" requires students to skim to decide which of the options below is the best title for the passage: A The story of a film maker B A brief history of cinema C The history of the film industry The teacher instructs students to use some strategies for this kind of task: - First, students read the options A, B and C and find out the differences between them - Then, they go back to the passage, and read the first and the last sentence to decide the main idea E.g.2 Task in Unit 10 "Conservation" requires students to skim to choose the most suitable main idea for each paragraph: A We cannot live without water B Let's something to save the earth C Forests give us a lot of valuable things D Vegetation can help conserve water The teacher instructs students to use some strategies to the task: - Read the first paragraph and try to sum up, in the students' own words, what it is about - Then, search through the list of main ideas provided in the task to find the most suitable answer - Make sure the main idea chosen sums up the entire paragraph and not just one idea within it - Continue with the rest paragraphs b Scanning: In this skill, readers have to locate a specific item of information needed They pass quickly over irrelevant information and focus only on the wanted information A useful way to teach this skill is to ask students to search for some specific information like dates, time, definition or figures in a certain time allowance There are some tasks in the textbook, which require this skill For example: In task of Unit 14 "The World Cup", students are required to scan the text and complete each of the following sentences with a word or a number Only teams competed in the first World Cup Today the final tournament of the World Cup has teams The teacher instructs students some strategies to the task: - First, students read through all the sentences to work out what information they are to look for and underline the key words - Then, students go back to the text and scan it until they see the first instance of the key words Students should read around the key words If they cannot find the answer in the first instance, then they should keep on reading until they can find it in the second or in the third instance and so on c Predicting: Students can learn to make prediction on the basis of the title, subtitle, linguistic context or non-linguistic context, such as graphs, tables, diagrams, maps and their knowledge of the topic This strategy not only activates their mind but also gives them a strong motivation to proceed to the next step of the lesson The teachers at Ke Sat High School said that they often use predicting in their reading lessons They use this skill in Warm-up stage of the lessons They ask their students to make prediction on the basis of the title of the unit, the pictures enclosed the passages, the students' background knowledge about the topic they are reading 5.2.3 Giving homework and checking the previous lesson frequently After each reading lesson, the students are often given homework Frequently, the exercise in "After you read" becomes their homework Depending on each lesson and on the level of the students, the exercise in this stage will be done at home by the students themswlves without the teacher's instruction, or it will be adapted in order to make it simple As mentioned in the previous part, the lessons in the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" are considered to be long The teacher often has to take most of the time of the lesson to teach new lesson She hardly has time to check the previous lesson One of the teachers said that she overheard some of her students' talk that they liked English lessons bacause they did not have to anything at home , as the teacher did not check the previous lesson Rarely checking the previous lessons results in students' laziness, therefore, their learning result will go worse Thus, teachers should help their students to form a habit of frequent study by giving them homework The given exercises should be checked as warm-up activities in the next class In this way, students would become more responsible for their learning One of our teachers gives a way of checking the previous lesson Because of the limitation of time, she asks her students to homework on paper sheets Then, in the next class, she collects the sheets and corrects them at home.After having corrected, she gives them back to the students By this way, the students have to homework, and the teacher can know how well/ badly they it 5.3 Improving teacher's techniques in reading lessons 5.3.1 Employing three stages in reading lessons According to the result of the study, one of the students' difficulties is the lack of vocabulary and grammatical structures In addition, their expectation from their teachers is various teaching techniques The repeated teaching method in every class hour may bore the students In order to overcome these problems, some suggestions are offered below: Basing on characteristics of different groups of students, the teacher should use appropriate techniques or even in the same class, the teacher also has to employ various techniques in different reading lessons in order to refresh the classroom atmosphere and make reading class more interesting and different However, whatever to change, whatever to employ, the teacher cannot omit any of the three stages in the reading lesson: Pre, While and Post-reading In each stage, various techniques should be employed * First, in Pre-reading stage (Before you read), the teacher should activate their background knowledge The most important things for the teacher to in this stage include: giving/ eliciting basic information about the text topic, text structures, text genre and text's author, providing necessary background information about unfamiliar cultural content, pre-teaching vocabulary and explaining unfamiliar/ difficult grammatical structures One of difficulties in teaching reading comprehension the teachers at Ke Sat High School are coping with is the long and difficult passage To reduce this difficulty , in Pre-reading stage, the teacher shouls make the passage easily understandable for students by introducing the passage and presenting new vocabulary The teacher should introduce the topic of the passage by asking Ss to discuss the title of the unit (frequently, the title of the unit is the title of the paasage), or to look at and discuss the picture enclosed the passage In addition, the teacher can use the available questions in prereading stage in the textbook to ask students to have short discussion From then, the teacher leads into the text In this stage, the teacher cannot forget to pre-teach vocabulary This is an important duty in each reading lesson, because one of the students' difficulties is the lack of vocabulary The teacher can elicit or teach some vocabulary depending on each text Here, the teacher should teach the words which not appear in Task (Vocabulary comprehension task) And the teacher should teach key words, which help the students to comprehend the text What are the key words? How many words are needed to teach? How are the words introduced to the students? All the answers should be prepared by the teacher before the class One thing the teacher should remember is that a long list of key words is a warning that the text is too difficult * Second, in While- reading stage (While you read), the teacher develops students' reading skills, comprehension and makes use of their background knowledge The teacher can this by employing the following activities: reading for general understanding, reading to extract specific information, reading for detailed comprehension, predicting continuous events and then reading to verify these predictions While-reading is the main stage of a reading lesson with the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" In this stage, the teacher has to help the students to read the passage, the reading tasks to comprehend the passage This stage often takes a lot of time So it is important that the teacher should clearly explain the requirements of the tasks and instruct students to use suitable strategies to the tasks quickly Moreover, the teacher should let the students the tasks by themselves first by asking them to work in groups, in pairs or individually While the students are working, the teacher should go around to observe or to provide help when necessary At last, the teacher should check and give the correct answers * Third, in Post-reading stage (After you read), the teacher may ask their students to exercises individually, or in pairs, or in groups; role-play; further discussion on the subject matter they have learnt The teacher should try to create more exercises for students to after each lesson in order to enhance the knowledge they have just been taught One important point in this stage that the teacher must remember is giving feedback on students' performance Students have right to know what they is right or wrong, good or bad The teacher's positive feedback is considered essential to sustain students' motivation and to prevent fossilization Theoretically, those are the things the teacher should in Post-reading stage However, in fact, at Ke Sat High School, with the 10th form students, the teachers have difficulty in completing the exercise in Post- reading stage They just give instructions how to And the exercise often becomes homework for the students to at home The teachers in our school are trying to manage lesson time in order to employ enough three stages in a reading lesson 5.3.2 Adjusting time and imposing time limits It would be advisable for the teacher to impose time limits on reading assignments besides to teaching students the effective reading strategies The teacher should encourage students to abandon their word-by-word reading habit by introducing timed reading which help students read faster and to read in meaningful "chunks" Another way to impose students' reading speed is to make reading activities a class race or to give students passages to read and ask them to time themselves One of bad habits of our students is word-by word reading This habit takes a lot of time Giving up this habit at once is not easy And teachers encourage them to get rid of it, and to read faster To these, in reading lessons, the teachers give instructions clearly and time limits for the students to read and to the tasks Teachers can check the students' reading, and give marks to motivate them In addition, adjusting time among the reading stages, spending time reading the passage and doing the tasks sensibly are important The teachers said that they did not these things very well While- reading stage often takes most of the time.They are trying to manage time in reading lessons better in order to assure not only the time of a lesson but also the thing that the students comprehend the text well 5.4 Equipping facilities The poor classroom equipment is also part of poor reading lecture Therefore, besides the existing teaching facilities (board, chalk, textbook), it is necessary to equip classroom with modern facilities, such as computer or projector, and to equip the library with various reference books The modern facilities will make the lecture more effective as the teacher can explain the subject matter lively and efficiently and save a lot of time in writing down everything on board as usual Saving more time, the teacher may arrange time to carry out enough stages in a reading lesson The library is not only useful for students but also for the teachers as they can read more to make their lessons more interesting All the teachers said that they would like the school library to buy more English reference books, such as funny stories, basic grammar in use and supplementary books for the 10th form students And the teachers also would like to use computers with Internet to make teaching plans, to assign tests, or to get information Hopefully, with such facilities, teaching and learning reading will be more effective 5.5 Adapting materials The textbook "Tieng Anh 10" is designed for the 10th form students in all over the country Thus, its content should be adjusted to adapt our students' level The adaptation should be done with reading tasks And it is important that the adaptation always closely connects to the objectives of each lesson It means that although the materials are adapted, the objectives of the lesson are assured This process may include: a Omitting unnecessary tasks E.g Task in Unit "The day in the life of " (see Appendix 4) can be omitted , because the answers in this task is the same as those in Task b Omitting unnecessary questions in a task E.g Task in Unit "The story of my village" has questions (see Appendix 5) The last two questions can be omitted, because they are not necessary They belong to grammar which will be learnt in Language focus lesson c Simplifying the tasks given in the textbook E.g The teacher can simplify Task in Unit 13 "Films and Cinema" (see Appendix 6) in order that the students can easily to find the needed words The teacher can give the first letter of the needed words d Modifying/ Adjusting the requirements of the tasks E.g In "After you read" in Unit "The story of my village", the requirement of the task can be adjusted as below " how can people with an education help make the life of their community better" instead of " of their village better" It is easily understandable for Ss Those suggestions for adaptation help to reduce the students' difficulty in doing the tasks in the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" In a reading lesson, T employs three stages and uses variety of skills and strategies alternatively to help Ss to understand the passage and to reading tasks For example: This is the design of the reading period of Unit "The story of my village" (Time: 45') (see Appendix 7) * The aim of the lesson: Reading about the changes in the country life * The objectives of the lesson: By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to better their reading skills through vocabulary Matching and Table completion exercises, and enlarge vocabulary about country life such as bumper crops, cash crops, brick house, straw, mud, * Anticipated problems: Ss may lack vocabulary about the country life * Procedure: Warm - up (7') : Networks - Ask Ss to work in groups of three or four and make a list of words related to the country The group with the longest list and right words will be the winner Before you read (10') • Picture description: - Have Ss to look at the picture and work in pairs to discuss the questions in the book - Call on some Ss to read their answers aloud in front of the class - Feedback and give suggested answers The farmers are harvesting the crop They are working very hard It's a good/ bumper crop (Explain: a bumper crop) Good farming methods, modern technology, fertilizers, (Explain: Farming methods) Note: T may ask other questions to make full use of the picture Some simple questions may be used: - What you see in the picture? - Who are they? - What are they using? • Vocabulary pre-teach: Choose some new key words, which help Ss to understand the passage and the tasks T can give Vietnamese equivalents for some difficult words - straw (n): the dry part of rice after harvesting and is used to cook in farmers' kitchens ( mud (n): wet, soft soil (b technical high school (n): tr brick houses (n): houses made of bricks ! - thanks to (prep): owing to, because of Note: The words in pre-teaching are not the words in Task While you read (20') • Set the scene: You going to read a passage about life changes in the country You read it and the following tasks • Task - Vocabulary Matching (6') - Ask Ss to work individually - First, ask Ss to look at all the words in A and their definitions in B Make sure that the Ss identify the part of speech of the given words in A, and there are not new words in the definitions in B - Then, ask Ss to read the passage quickly and underline the given words in A - Encourage Ss to guess the meaning of the words in the context E.g Toguess the meaning of make ends meet, Ss should pay atention to the words: work hard, hardly in the same sentence - Call on some Ss to explain their answers in front of the class - Give correct answers: 1.b 2.d 3.a 4.e 5.c - Give Vietnamese equivalents if necessary • Task - Table Completion (8') In this task, Ss have to work individually and scan the passage to get specific information to complete the table T instructs Ss some strategies to - Let Ss study the table carefully before doing the task - Ask Ss to read the passage again and scan the information about each area of change (Note: It is easy to recognize that the first paragraph is about the village many years ago, the second - the village now) - Go around and provide help when necessary - Check the answers in front of the class - Give correct answers: Areas of change houses Before made of straw and mud Now made of brick radio and TV few families had a radio or a TV many families have a radio or set a TV set farming methods old new crops poor good/ bumper travel by cart/ on foot by motorbike • Task - Answering questions (6') - Ask Ss to work in pairs and answer the questions (Note: The two last questions can be omitted, because they belong to Reported speech, which is difficult for many students These questions will be seen again when learning Reported speech in Language focus lesson.) - Tell Ss to underline the key words in each question Make sure that Ss understand all the questions - Ask Ss to answer and compare their answers with another pair - Call on some Ss to read their answers aloud in front of the class - Give feedback and correct answer: It was poor and simple Because they hope that with an education of science and technology their children could find a way of bettering their lives They introduced new farmimg methods which resulted in bumper crops They also helped grow cash crops for export After you read (5') - Here, T can change the question " How can people with an education help make the life of their community better?" into " of their village better?" This is easily understandable for Ss - Let Ss base on the passage and write a paragraph of 5-7 sentences at home - Suggest some phrases: Introduce new farming methods, Grow cash crops for export, Apply modern technology, Raise awareness about safety food, Keep the environment clean, Wrapping (3') - Summarise the main points of the lesson: + Social knowledge: the changes in the country life + Language knowledge: some words about the country life - Assign homework: Write a paragraph of 5-7 sentences about " How can people with an education help make the life of their village better?" Summary of the chapter This chapter has made some suggestions to reduce difficulties that the teachers of English at Ke Sat High School encounter when teaching reading comprehension with the texrbook "Tieng Anh 10" It is really not easy to overcome the difficulties In order to become a good teacher in teaching reading, the teacher must work really hard and have appropriate teaching mothod Besides, they must be flexible and adaptable to respond to the requirements of the new textbook, and to improve students' reading skill In this part I would like to make a brief summary of the issues discussed in the study and offer some suggestions for further study Summary of the study This study provides an analysis of some difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" (the set of standard textbooks) The sources of these difficulties are perceived by the teachers of English and the 10th form students at Ke Sat High School The study is done with the purposes of identifying difficulties of the teachers, and then offering some suggestions to overcome those difficulties The study was carried out in terms of both theory and practice The study started with some concepts on reading and reading comprehension The next chapter described important features about the textbook used in this study, and the current situation of teaching at Ke Sat High School In order to find out the problem, several instruments were employed to collect the data: a survey questionnaire to students, a list of interview questions to the teachers of English in combination with classroom observation The ultimate goal of all these instruments is to find out difficulties that the teachers of English at Ke Sat High School are coping with in teaching reading comprehension with the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" to the 10th form students Why were the students' difficulties intended to find out? That is because difficulties of the students must be in any relation with their teachers' teaching The students, as being indicated in the findings, have some problems related to vocabulary and grammatical structures, i.e understanding and predicting new words, and to understanding the text In combination with other research instruments, the result of the study has pointed out some typical problems that the teachers face with in their daily teaching reading comprehension with the textbook: - The long and difficult reading passages and reading tasks - The low English level of the students - The students’ negative attitude towards learning reading - The lack of teaching aids After indicating the difficulties, the solutions have been suggested to overcome them They include: the ways to make reading lessons useful, the ways to train students to become efficient readers, the ways to improve teacher’s techniques in reading lessons, the ways to equip teaching facilities, and the ways to adapt materials It is hoped that what has been discussed in the study might be beneficial to both the teachers of English and the students as it helps them learn about their strength and weaknesses, and thus, identify room for future improvement and development of teaching and learning reading comprehension It is also hoped that the study will prove worthwhile to those who want to conduct in this area and who are concerned with the problem Limitations and suggestions for further study In most research projects, limitations are inevitable The study presented in this thesis is of no exception First, in terms of methodology, the study is limited in the fact that the data may not fully reflect all aspects of difficulties in teaching reading comprehension with the textbook "Tieng Anh 10" Second, the author's practical experience in teching reading comprehension with the textbook is limited, the suggestions to overcome difficulties are likely to be subjective and incomplete Third, within the scope of the thesis, the study cannot indicate concrete application in adapting the textbook In addition, the study has no chance to deal with other three skills in language teaching: Listening, Speaking and Writing All the existing limitations of this study call for further research " #$%& '( ) *"+ , - / / ) #"0" " " 1''&23 4( / ( 4! ! &%" " 7! )+ / " 7( 5!/( ; " " " !') 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